I am super lucky that in Canada, we have some of the most influential companies in the smart clothing market. I had the chance to sit down and discuss with Hannah Fung, the Marketing director Myant inc., about their vision of the future and their contribution to the smart textile industry.
It was also very interesting to hear her point of view from a marketer’s perspective and all the challenges that comes with marketing a product like smart textiles and smart clothes.
S.C : Tell me a little about yourself. How did you get interested in smart textile, AI, remote patient monitoring, and human connectedness?
H.F : I have an engineering background. Funny enough, I never actually worked as an engineer. I aspent most of my career working on analytics & insights for companies somehow related one way to another to medical devices, MedTech, healthcare, or pharmaceutical. I guess healthcare has always been on my radar.
One thing led to another. I took the position of marketing director at Myant inc. Working on something that feels like the future is not easy every day. However, I like the idea that I help create a more optimistic future. For me, this work has meaning and I can’t think of doing anything else.
S.C : Can you tell us a little more about Myant inc’s positioning in the IoT/Smart clothing market?
Myant inc works at the intersection of so many disciplines. We are end-to-end solution providers. Some companies may be able to put together some resources to create a prototype. However, we can provide an A to Z solution because we reunited the whole process under our roof.
Back when Myant inc was created and even now, there weren’t any other companies that had the expertise to make all the various disciplines smart clothes or smart textile require. From the fibers to the patterns, or the electrical components, everything that is involved in the creation of smart textiles, we do that either in-house or with the help of very close providers. Indeed, a part of it relies on textile manufacturing but also data science.
photo credit : Myant inc
As a matter of fact, you need data scientists to figure out what to do with the data. But, you also need specialists in biology and kinesiology to understand how to make sense of the data that was extracted and how to make it useful to people. Then, once that is done, app developers can work on the platforms that can convey the right message in the right forms to people.
S.C : Myant Inc. often uses the term “Textile Computing”. What is it exactly?
We have a very broad vision of what we want to accomplish. It’s not only about changing the way people connect to healthcare. It’s about giving power to the textiles that surround you so that you can learn more about yourself and optimize your life thanks to them.
And we’re not only talking about clothes. Textiles are everywhere in your life. You can find textile on your bed, your chair, your couch, your car. If you want to find a way to connect to the human body, isn’t using something that is already everywhere in our life the best way to do so?
Think about your phone or your laptop. We tend to organize our lives around them to use the technology. What we are doing is, on the contrary, embedding technology into something that we already interact with, so that we don’t even have to think about it. We want smart textiles to become a bidirectional interface for the human body.
When you think about it, textile computing is quite a transformative approach. The real power of textile computing happens when most of us are connected most of the time.
S.C : You just launched Phase 2 of Skiin, Myant Inc’s smart clothing line. Do you market smart clothing the same way as in any other markets or are there any specificities tied to the smart clothing industry?
We’ve been testing the alpha version for a while but now, it’s finally ready to go public and is available on our website. By knitting the ability to sense the body into everyday clothing, Skiin provides people and their loved ones a connection to their well-being.
photo credit : Myant inc
At the moment, Skiin’s main customers are people who have a real need for a non-stop connection such as people whose parents have dementia for instance, or overweight people who need to be careful about their vitals. Companies might also be interested to monitor the well-being and performances of their employees.
Smart textiles and smart clothing follow the same innovation curve as the Internet of things. Just like smartphones, it starts with a niche and early adopters. But the dream we have will truly happen when we reach a certain connectedness critical mass.
One last thing, the main challenges I’ve been facing though is that most of the time: consumers have no idea what smart textiles can actually do. The thing is explaining what smart textiles are to people with 2-second mental space is not easy.
S.C : How do you see the smart clothing market? What are the opportunities and the main roadblocks?
H.F : Part of what we do is building the infrastructure for the smart clothing industry so that anyone can innovate. There are many great researchers and academics who can create smart clothes. But finding a factory that can take the prototype and mass-produce is still a true challenge. That’s why we are working hard on defining industry standards and processes that make prototyping easier and scaling possible.
photo credit : Myant inc
With Digital Textile Exchange, a digital manufacturing platform we created, we can connect a network of stakeholders in the advanced textile innovation value-chain.
In other words, if you want to create a smart clothe, with Digital Textile Exchange, you could have access and be introduced to suppliers who have the capability to create your product.
Another major roadblock is the lack of skilled candidates. The technical expertise from a knitting perspective doesn’t really exist out there in the world, which will make the recruitment an issue in the future if we do nothing. So, we work closely with institutes so that they can have access to the technology and start experimenting. But by doing so, we are also creating for us and the industry a true talent pipeline.
For more information on Skiin, feel free to visit skiin.com .
Spinali Design is a French company created in 2015 by Marie SPINALI and her husband Romain Spinali, specialized in smart clothes. Their first product was the Neviano, a connected swimsuit that allows the person to know when they need to put some sunscreen on.
In today’s interview with Romain Spinali, we are going to talk about connected swimsuit, fashion, market fit and sustainability.
Photo credit : Serge Nied
S.C: What made you launch Spinali Design?
R.S : When my wife told me about this idea of a connected swimsuit, I thought it was a great idea. At the time, we were selling technological solutions to the real estate industry. It was a completely different challenge.
The development of the swimsuit took about 4 months.
As soon as we launched it, the connected swimsuit almost immediately caught the eyes of the media and even the international press. American and Chinese media mentioned the Neviano.
S.C: So, fashion-wise, is there a market for Smart Clothes?
R.S : What we understood afterwards is that it’s a market in which you need to create a demand. No one really needs a swimsuit, unless you go to the sea, and even less a connected swimsuit. You need to create to create a desire for it. Same goes for dresses.
Here’s an interesting statistic : in 2019, 1 out of 2 female clothing is worn less than 2 months.
In other words, it’s all about frustration and nowadays, social media and mass marketing are building this frustration. Today, people are not buying a piece of clothing for its inner quality anymore but they are making purchases out of frustration and desire.
However, I think there is a true opportunity for smart clothes if you look at it, not with a fashion angle, but as a service-based accessory.
S.C: Can you develop your thoughts?
R.S : 5 years later, we now see a true opportunity for service-based pieces of clothing. Beyond the aesthetic, smart clothing can provide a service. And that gives a new meaning, new direction to the textile world.
We can definitely see it with our connected gloves. Our gloves are made with a fabric treated with titanium dioxide that can destroy microparticles, bad bacterias and viruses. Thanks to the photocatalysis principle, these gloves help people easily disinfect their hands.
The demand is actually higher than we can actually produce. Covid-19 definitely accelerated the need for change and the society’s transformation.
S.C: Since we are talking about transformation, what do you think of the growing importance of sustainable development in fashion? Can smart clothing be sustainable?
R.S: Smart clothes are made of fabrics and electronics. The electronic parts will last longer than the fabric. This being said, if you source eco-responsible and quality fabrics, the smart piece of clothing will last longer.
On top of that, we believe in a circular economy. In other words, we give the possibility to buyers to recycle their gloves once they reach the end-of-life phase. When we receive the used gloves, we recycle them and transform them into new products.
S.C: According to you, what are the main challenges of this industry?
R.S: I think, for this industry to reach their full potential, we need to develop a second hand market for smart clothing. Just like a car, we must be able to sell smart clothing to a second-hand shop so that they can have another life. Of course, clothes need to be evaluated and resale prices should be fixed according to a certain price list.
If European cities and the state work together to build this second-hand market, Europe could become a leader in the market of service-based textile.
Many thanks Romain for answering our question on the smart clothing market. To learn more about Spinali design, feel free to visit their website, Spinali-design.fr .
Hexoskin is a Montreal-based company specialized in biometric shirts that can monitor your health vitals such as cardiac, pulmonary activity, or sleep data. Created in 2006, Hexoskin is a leader and a pioneer in the smart clothing industry and advanced body-worn sensing technologies. They sent smart shirts to space and are currently working closely with governments and health systems in the US, UK, and Canada to support the fight against Covid-19.
Hexoskin’s mission has always been to make the precise health data collected by its body-worn sensors accessible and useful for everyone. So, we sat down with Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, one of Hexoskin’s co-founders, to talk about the future of smart clothing.
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SC: What led you to create Hexoskin?
PA.F: Hexoskin was born from the desire of helping our society better care for a population that is steadily growing. Fifteen years ago, it was clear that the existing (Canadian) health system was not ready for what was coming. That’s why we wanted to find a solution that could potentially prevent diseases and reduce the hospitalization rate.
At that time, most solutions required the person to keep a health journal and enter his or her data into a system. However, not only don’t they result in objective and quantitative data that could be used for predictive analysis but they also demand a lot of effort from the patient.
We believe that for a system to be viable in the long run, it needs to be seamlessly integrated into the daily life of people. Hence, we thought a lot about systems that could be placed in one’s home. But to collect data and effectively monitor human health vitals, you need to place captors on the torso area. So, we quickly realized the best way to go was to integrate the systems into an object that everyone is already used to: a t-shirt.
SC: Data collection is quite a hot topic at the moment. Is it also an issue for smart clothing & smart shirts?
PA.F: Smart t-shirts collect data. So, it is indeed a sensitive topic for us as well. However, our information system is well secured and only the user can access the collected data.
Besides, we only collect human health data (heartbeat, respiratory rate…) Who could benefit from such data aside from the patient itself or the doctors? In countries where there is universal health coverage, stealing that kind of information would be pointless.
The personal data collected via smart shirts should only be used for the user’s health, or medical research if the person gave his/ her consent beforehand. It should never be used against you.
SC: What do you think of the smart clothing market and how do you see it evolving in the next few years?
PA.F: I don’t see any economic opportunities for smart clothing in the fashion segment. I feel most needs are more easily covered with wearable techs, like the Apple Watch for instance. This being said, individuals could purchase a smart t-shirt. We intentionally drove the price down so that people who want to invest in themselves and their health could afford it if they want to.
What I notice though is that there is a growing demand for smart clothing in the healthcare and public sector. Among our clients, we have medical researchers, healthcare and governmental organizations, first responders (firefighters, policemen, or military) as well as aerospace companies.
There are true benefits in investing in health-related programs that can help people stay independent and healthy longer. Smart clothing can help improve the lives of elders or people with specific conditions. Right now, we are mainly focusing on heart and respiratory diseases. But smart clothing could also help monitor and prevent other types of diseases. I foresee a future when it will be normal for people to be equipped with smart clothing to keep themselves healthier.
On top of that, prevention is better than cure. It is less costly to invest a few thousand dollars in health-related programs than sending people to the hospital.
SC: What are currently the main challenges in the smart clothing industry?
PA.F: On the one hand, the smart clothing industry is faced with the same challenges as the IoT industry. In other words, companies are still looking for the right business models. Besides, medical information systems are not as advanced as what you can find in other industries and lag about 20 years behind.
Until the pandemic highlighted the benefits of teleconsultation, the technological advances were slow.
On the other hand, the smart clothing industry still needs to define and standardize industrial processes. Unlike the automotive or the aeronautical industry, you can’t just walk to a manufacturer with a list of specifications to develop a prototype.
Creating smart clothing requires many skill sets and a wide range of know-how. A smart clothing project involves people from the clothing, textiles, industrial design, electronics, biomedical engineering, and software industry. You can’t find all these skills in one single factory. Besides, the tools and techniques that can currently be used are limited.
That’s why we created our production chain. That way, we can control the cost and the quality of our t-shirts.
SC: Do you feel being in Montreal helped in regards to that matter?
PA.F: It sure helped. Until the 2000s, Montreal was considered one of the most important cities for fashion in North America. Everything we needed for the project was right there.
SC : Can smart clothing be sustainable ?
PA.F : We are doing a lot of Research and Development on the subject. It’s possible. Our main challenge is that we must use stretch fabric to embrace the body forms and keep the monitoring sensors in place. So far, synthetic fabrics like spandex offer the best value for money.
This being said, with the right materials and fabrics, smart clothing can last 30 up to 100 washes.
Is smart clothing the future of healthcare ? Pierre-Alexandre seems to think so. Many thanks to Pierre-Alexandre for answering our questions. If you’re interested in learning more about Hexoskin or if you’d like to buy yourself a smart t-shirt, feel free to visit hexoskin.com .
